I have posted about this before, but I just don’t get the fetish some people have for the federal income tax where paying it magically makes you an upstanding citizen in a way that other kinds of taxes don’t. You hear a lot of rhetoric about how many people “don’t pay taxes,” but when you look at the stats, what they’re referring to is federal income tax. Most folks are paying other kinds of taxes: prominently – sales taxes, payroll taxes.
Romney has taken that a step further, apparently. Saying that 47% of Americans don’t pay federal income tax and, therefore, they are “dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
To state the obvious, lots of people don’t pay federal income taxes because they don’t have much money. More interesting is the question of why they don’t have much money. This Romney quote gives us insight into why he thinks 47% of the population doesn’t make enough money. They’re lazy and dependent on the government.
You know what? There are lazy people out there. I’ve seen them. Able bodied deadbeats who just can’t be bothered to work and who aren’t dead because they mooch off of family, the government, whoever is stupid enough to give to them. But, you know what else? Nowhere near 47% of the American population is like that. Most folks either bust their ass or are willing to bust their ass to provide for themselves and their families. However, our national mythology notwithstanding, hard work is no guarantee of prosperity.
But, just because a person’s work or willingness to work hasn’t made them rich doesn’t mean they ought to be denigrated as a moocher who casts a vote based on a calculation about who is most likely to give them a handout.
The funny thing is, Romney doesn’t pay much if anything in federal income tax, does he? (I pose this as a question since his taxes are secret.)
Romney paid 13% or somesuch.
Doug, good stuff…The GOP generally ignores payroll/FICA taxes on income. And the Dems– the supposed champions of the working poor and middle class…LOL!– play along, since they’d rather demagogue “income taxes” and Social Security than address either mess. Pathetic.
A guy who claims a $77,000 tax deduction has no standing to talk about other people sucking off the federal teat. Also, a lot of non-income tax paying deadbeats are old white seniors on whose support he counts.
Romney and Ryan aren’t against government perks. They’re merely against you getting theirs (and their rich buddies).
If you’re going to rip Romney for some $77,000 tax deduction, why don’t you also mention how much he paid in taxes that year? Context is useful, even when the context doesn’t help your argument.
Let’s also pay attention to the fact that the Romney/Ryan tax plan is the one that wants to eliminate/reduce tax deductions en masse, similar to the Reagan 1986 tax code rewrite. How does this pay into your last sentence?
I didn’t think Romney had stuck his neck out so far as to tell voters which deductions he specifically intended to eliminate. If I’m wrong about that, can you point me to a list?
To a point, the answer is “all of them”. It has been stated that Romney wants to limit the amount of tax deductions a high income person can receive. I don’t know of a place where he has stated which credits/deductions, but expecting a candidate to do so is pretty unrealistic. Instead of writing (and hearing): “Romney wants to lower rates and take away the housing deductions” Romney’s proposals would be interpreted (by voters and certain aspects of the media) as “Romney wants to takes your house (deduction) away.”
“If we told you what our plan is, you’d never vote for us.” Looks like he hasn’t been willing to specify which “loopholes” he plans on closing.
But, he says that his magical tax plan will: 1) Lower tax rates for everyone; 2) Will not increase the federal deficit; and 3) Will not burden middle income people to make up for lost revenues from the tax cuts.
And it will enact the Laffler curve as a law of nature, rather than an economic theory that defies quantification. If we could just find that illusive point where the decrease buy reductions in arginal tax revenue equals or slighlty exceeds the growth in GDP sufficent to equal the loss in taxes due to the cuts in marginal tax revenue, we’d be drinking from the lemonade springs on the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
This article has been refuted recently. I just saw something published in the last day or two that challenged the findings of the “tax analysts.”
You might want to cite that article. The line about cutting taxes and offsetting them with unspecified cuts and closing of loopholes is the oldest con in the political playbook.
As Carlito requested:
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/14/nation/la-na-romney-tax-plan-20120915
Paul, they only have good intentions of an elimination of deductions and credits. They might as well just tell us they will cut waste, fraud , and foreign aid and balance the budget.
They would never have the political ability to accomplish a massive elimination of the deductions and credits. They are too popular, to engrained, and their lobbies too powerful.
And probably more useful for context than that illusive dressage horse deduction ( I saw an article in Forbes that addresses the intracacies of the deduction and decided I did not want to spend a couple hours reading it) is Romney’s effective tax rate.
I respectively disagree. If Reagan can simplify and reduce the tax code in 1986, Romney can do so today.
Romney/Ryan ain’t Reagan. Not by a long shot.
People say that Romney isn’t Reagan. Other than the obvious fact that they are indeed two seperate people, I am not sure I agree. There are certain similarities both in experience (governors of liberal states) and in beliefs.
Yet somehow, conservatives think Romney is much too liberal to be Reagan’s heir apparent, and liberals believe (or intentionally try to portray) that Romney is too much of a conservative extremist to be Reagan’s successor. My belief is that if Reagan incarnate ran for office today, nobody would recognize him as the heir apparent, from EITHER part of the spectrum. Just my .02.
Romney, or Ryan, does not have anything close to the same kind of folksy charisma that the late President Reagan did. Plus, how the heck do you “know” what Romney believes in (for government)? From my perspective, it depends upon the audience sitting in front of him at any particular moment.
If Romney is elected, we can revisit this later, because I just cannot spend a whole lot of time researching my point of view right now.
You are probably right about Reagan running today. Part of that is the tone of political discourse today. Then, it was more like, “Let’s get this done together, if it’s a compromise, so be it”. Today, it’s more like, “Hey pal, it’s my way, or the highway!”.
Yeah, that is a fair criticism of Romney that his beliefs do not seem very consistent. Speaking of which, here is a similar article about another Republican president. :-)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5166503/ns/nbcnightlynews/t/reagan-man-contradictions/
Reagan still governed when a shadow of bipartianship existed. And the 1986 act treated all income equally, no reduced rates for LTCGs.
Romney, assuming he is elected, would be blistered by the mortgage banker’s lobby, the realtor’s lobby, the builder’s lobby, and anyone else who has a state in the mortgage interest deduction. Then he would have to take on the health insurance industry and the health insurance deduction, an industry which he pledges to anger when take away millions of new insureds with he promised repeal of the ACA.
Hell, even Reagan isn’t Reagan any more. His mythology has only a nodding acquaintance with his reality.
Yeah, remember the Chuck Norris jokes from a few years ago? I think “Chuck Norris” is the code name for Ronald Reagan.
I’m sure a lot of people who make slightly too little money to pay income tax could have just used other peoples’ money to get controlling interest in businesses and load them with debt in order to enrich themselves while the businesses go bankrupt. But most end up working hard instead. It’s probably a mix of not knowing the tricks, and not being total bastards.
Oops, forgot that it helps to be rich and connected, too.
The shark has been jumped.
WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney’s budget plan would significantly raise income taxes for many families making between $100,000 and $200,000, analyses by leading Republican economists cited by the Romney campaign show.
The Republican analyses were designed to rebut the Democratic charge that Romney’s plan would “increase taxes for the middle class.” The studies conclude that the plan could work as Romney has said, but that doing so would require eliminating all or most deductions and credits for households with income over $100,000. That would include wiping out such popular tax provisions as the deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes.
Technically doable. But it would be news to many millions of people making over $100,000 that they have been promoted up and out of the middle class. And being newly upper class, you will have the honor of paying a higher effective tax rate than your fellow upper-class billionaires.